Chummery Party

Its been a tradition at the South branch to have a Chummery Party at the end of the sales stint of the BLT’s. Just like every thing else practiced in this branch, this too was one ‘awesome’ tradition. We BLT’s have had flood lit cricket matches, chances to perform skits and dances, and numerous drinking and partying sessions at the best Clubs and Hotels of Chennai during our 4 month stay here. It was just natural for us to repay in kind for the one party that is completely ours to organize. And that was what inspired us to prepare really hard when we heard about this tradition of Chummery Party that was supposed to be organized by us.

We first had to decide on a theme, and after much thought, settled with the “youngsters”. It was pretty banal considering the obvious relationship we share with the rest of the branch. But this was actually a good idea because the term ‘youngsters’ had a story behind it –

There was a time when Sairam and I had gone out with the Branch HR Manager – Geetha and an ASM – Sandeep and we were just talking about Geetha’s job in office and Sai commented on it by saying she must be getting quite bored because she is always hanging out with the ‘Oldies’ in the branch. He meant the rest of the RLT, but when the ASM’s heard about it, they thought Sai was talking about them and totally took our case on it. We were invited to a club in Chennai called Bikes and Barrels and we had just a day before written a test at the Branch regarding our learning’s at the stint. When we reached the club, the ASM’s first started harassing us saying we copied in that test. We tried our best to deny the allegations, and even before we got to making our point, they moved on to the ‘Oldies’ comment that Sai had made. One after another, all the ‘CLM’s’ we had done started coming out and we were getting properly ragged by our seniors. CLM’s, for the uninitiated means, Career Limiting Move, another TLA (Three Letter Acronym) in the HUL parlance; something that all of us BLT’s seem to have done a lot of during our stint here because they were all pouring out during that drinking session at Bikes and Barrels. And the biggest CLM that was harped on the most was about us calling the people in office ‘Oldies’ and how we thought we were ‘Youngsters’. So this was why we had decided to coin the theme of our party itself as ‘Youngsters’. It seemed to fit in quite well, but we wanted to communicate it in a slightly abstruse manner to the branch. And this was because everyone in the branch seemed to enjoy a good puzzle every now and then. This was why every function or party at the branch was always preceded by a treasure hunt or another similar activity that would lead to either the theme or the gift or even the activities at the function. So we decided to do something on the same line and prepared a set of jumbled anagrams that would need to be rearranged to give common HUL TLA’s. We had given things like Fart Despicable Icy Oil which rearranged to Field Capability Score and Setting One Kick Up which rearranged to Stock Keeping Unit. And from all these anagrams, letters were chosen to give one final anagram – “youngsters”. This was not only the theme, but also the password the invite that we had prepared. So if seniors wanted to view the invite, they had to first crack the puzzle!

It was really well accepted in the branch and we managed to create quite a fair amount of buzz by this activity. Anyway, some of the people cracked it and for the others, we mailed the theme and the invite one day before the party.

On the day of the party, we BLT’s spent the entire morning decorating the place and went to office only in the afternoon. As soon as we reached there, we our RM meeting, followed by a meeting the RSM, RHM and so many other people, and it was nearly 7p.m by the time we left the branch. Worst part was, we had mentioned the time at the invitation for the party as 7:30! By the time we reached the Chummery, there were some people already there! Steve was himself there early and he wasn’t letting us in, saying we were supposed to be the hosts and we weren’t supposed to come in late. We were obviously still getting ragged and we had to beg and plead to get into the Chummery for our own party!

Soon we changed into our costumes – matching t-shirts and shorts to make us look like ‘youngsters’ and brought out a cake that said “Thanks for the rocking time”. The seniors didn’t look too impressed and ended up smearing that cake all over our clothes. We then had to go and change our costumes and we had to change into something that was demanded of us – vests and ties!! God, we looked really hideous!

Anyway, we then brought out the videos we had prepared for our tutors. We had set up a projector and everything for this purpose and we spent a considerable amount of time filming the TSO’ and AE/CE’s on funny questions on our ASM tutors and we were sincerely hoping that people would like the videos and not rag us again. Thankfully, they actually enjoyed all the videos we had prepared. Then we went on to a song we had prepared for the team –

HUL / HLL, FMCG Big-wig

BLT’s singing

A song before leaving

HPC, FNB, Out of Home, Shakti

U1, U2, U3?

God save me!

NTN, STN, KNSA, WAP

CASA, KSA

In CRO, we all stay

Chrysalis, Align, Everything’s changing

Debjit’s got a good break

Rishi’s come to take his place..

CHORUS

We didn't start the fire

It was always burning

Since the branch’s been turning

We didn't start the fire

Though we did ignite it

But we tried to fight it

Big bosses Steve Shyam

Z, TJ and Amlan

Scary they were at first

But they all turned out to be fun

Shashwat’s got a family

Mukesh Himanshu are WIP

Sandeep’s got too many

Cody just wants his PS3

Sachin is a PJ Singh

Sairam’s got a Nestle ring

Deepali’s with rural king

And Nikhil’s happy boozing

Kishore, Aishwarya, Gita

Shankar and Nandita

Shashi Ro’ Sudipto

They all rock Chennai RO

CHORUS

This became a huge hit. People loved it so much, they not only asked for an encore, but also sang along with us. Thereafter, we brought out the food – subs and pizzas along with the Red Label and flavoured Smirnoff that was already arranged by us. And soon, all of us got into a nice conversation about BLT parties and other traditions at the South Branch. I also did a mimicry on Steve and some other seniors along with Sairam and Prathap and people really enjoyed that too. All in all, it turned out to be an absolutely lovely party. We concluded by handing out souvenirs that we had bought for everyone and special gifts we had bought/made for our tutors. A fine end to an awesome stint in Chennai.